The son of a political activist, Martin Espada was born and reared in New York's impoverished East Side neighborhood. He grew up participating in demonstrations for social justice. After becoming a lawyer, he worked as a tenants’ rights advocate, but he also wrote and published poems in the tradition of Pablo Neruda and the poets of the Nuyorican scene. Espada’s work has won the Paterson Poetry Prize and the PEN/Revson Fellowship, the Gustavo Myers Outstanding Book Award, and the Independent Publisher Book Award, Currently, he teaches writing at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he writes essays, edits anthologies, and continues to write poems.